No One’s Far From This Tree

Yesterday I called Apple with a few questions about my new Macbook Pro. The rep offered some helpful solutions, and then we began comparing notes about our new O-Corona lives, hers in Kentucky, mine in one of the US hubs of the virus.

At first it was light and breezy but as is almost always true in Life in the Time of COVID-19, the dynamic quickly deepened. She was shocked by how how completely the City That Never Sleeps had shut down and by my casual assumption that I had contracted the virus. Her greatest fear, she confided, was that she’d also contract it. Then she began to sob.

Actually, she said. My greatest fear is that I’ll have to give birth while we’re all still quarantined. She went on to say she had just discovered she was pregnant, which she’d been trying to do for the last five years. There was a pause, in which we both realized just how far we’d conversationally traveled outside the parameters of a standard Applecare call. Then I took a breath.

Ok, I said. We’re going to pray together. So we did–for our health and the health of everyone we loved, which in my case was and always will be everyone. For the spirit in her body who had the temerity to incarnate into the world now. And for all the corporations and institutions to recognize and honor our humanity. After we hung up, I received the standard Applecare survey. Was I satisfied with the quality of the call? Yes, yes, I was.